The smartphone is no longer just a shopping tool. It has become the storefront. That was the central takeaway from the “ 2025 Global Digital Shopping Index: The Rise of the Mobile Window Shopper and What It Means for Payments,” a PYMNTS Intelligence report commissioned by Visa Acceptance Solutions. Drawing on surveys of 18,468 consumers and 3,464 merchants across eight countries, the report found that mobile devices now shape how consumers browse, compare, pay and shop inside physical stores. The shift is not subtle. It is structural.

A unified vision enabling merchants to seamlessly integrate payments, data, and technology to deliver smarter, more connected customer experiences. Worldline, a European leader in payment services,  announces the launch of Worldline One Commerce, a new integrated vision that redefines how merchants connect payments, data, technology and customer experiences.

Worldline One Commerce empowers retailers to deliver smooth, consistent shopping journeys across all channels and devices, while improving operational efficiency and strengthening customer relationships. By unifying in-store and online payments within a single continuous experience, merchants will gain full control to design ecosystems tailored to their customers’ evolving expectations.

The world of shopping has changed — and all because of your phone. Our study of 18,468 consumers and 3,464 businesses across eight markets reveals that nearly half of consumers across the globe used a smartphone in their most recent retail purchase. The “ 2025 Global Digital Shopping Index ,” a PYMNTS Intelligence report commissioned by Visa Acceptance Solutions, details the rise of the mobile-first shopper.

Investing in payments is creating new opportunities and experiences. The Global Payments 2026 Commerce and Payment Trends Report is here—your guide to the next era of connected commerce. As consumers embrace new technologies and demand experiences that move seamlessly across channels, this report helps business leaders meet them there.

This report focuses on six key trends reshaping the future of commerce. From the rise of agentic commerce, where AI-powered systems anticipate and act on customer intent, to the evolution of point-of-sale (POS) technologies that extend beyond the countertop, and the expansion of embedded payments that make every interaction frictionless—these shifts are defining the next competitive edge.

Mastercard has partnered with Google to join its new Universal Commerce Protocol, an open protocol that enables interoperability between AI agents and merchants. These protocols are essential to growing the adoption of agentic commerce. This is why Mastercard further partners across the value chain with Google’s Agent Payment Protocol and Agent2Agent Protocol, OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, and more. This ensures that these platforms meet the same high standards for clear user intent, secure credentials, and verifiable agent identity.

The pace of innovation in retail is incredible, and agentic commerce — where AI completes tasks on people’s behalf — is evolving from a concept to reality. Last year, we introduced agentic tools for shoppers and made agent-led payments seamless and secure with our Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). We believe in an agentic commerce future that is open, collaborative and built for everyone to succeed. Partnering with leading retailers and platforms, we’re sharing several announcements today that are an important step in that journey.

G20 nations have inched ahead in making cross-border payments more efficient and affordable, but progress has been uneven, says a new BIS study. The G20 forum consists of 19 nations, including the U.S., the U.K., South Africa, Germany, Japan and China, plus two regional organizations, the African Union and European Union.

Brief:

G20 member countries will likely not meet their cross-border payment targets by 2027, according to a Bank of International Settlements report released Dec. 11.

The Paypers has just launched the Global Ecommerce Report 2026– Scaling Ecommerce and SaaS: Finding the Right Partners to Succeed across Borders. The global ecommerce landscape is shifting. Trade tensions, tariff volatility, and recession fears defined 2025, resulting in the slowest ecommerce growth since 2022. However, projections for 2026 suggest that we are nearing a period of stabilisation, as the market is anticipated to reach USD 6.8 trillion.